The Bagel Nebula, you stinky monkeys!
Humped and dumped on June 17, 2012.
Four times on each tooth. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Four times. On each molar, incisor, canine, and feline. Each tooth was polished to a high gloss. If I could somehow get my eyes in front of my own teeth, I was sure I’d be able to see my own reflection in them.
I ate a whole box of zesty cheese crackers—cheese crackers with white rice, brown rice, red rice, blue rice, Rice Krispies, rice pilaf, and rice poupon. There was even some mayonnaise and some goatradish on the side. I counted each cracker—I counted each grain of rice. There were 3,490,123 grains in all. I categorized them by color, length, shape, and the number of scratches along their elongated, ricy, little bodies. Then I squared the number in my head, again and again, until I surpassed infinity, came right back around to zero, and ate myself like an Ouroboros. Then I counted some more.
I didn’t just surpass infinity, I surprised it, too. Damn, did that li’l bugger run when I came screaming up from behind! I never realized how aerodynamic a sideways figure-eight could be!
I noshed on the number line, in increments of 0.000 007 813 09, until I got bored and went to nosh on something else. I didn’t quite make it back to infinity, but I sure did munch a lot of numbers. I wished my number line had been just a single axis in a two-, three-, or even six-dimensional graph. Then I would’ve had so many numbers to chew up!
r, theta? What the hell does that mean?
I collapsed exhausted onto my couch, crumpling into a heap half the size of a normal man but twice as long. I stared at the ceiling tiles and counted every little dimple, divot, and channel cut in their surface. One tile had 1,792,809 dimples, 1,490,275 divots, and 1,394,876 channels connecting them all. Some dimples had multiple channels radiating out from themselves; others had only one, or even none. The divots were just… well, what is a divot anyway? If I had been a microbe, the dimples would be mountains; the channels, canyons grander than the Grand. And the divots would be just divots.
I uncrumpled myself, standing at full height, but realized I was still twice as long as a normal man. I guess those penis pills I bought from an email really do work!
Several days had passed since I had had my skin humperdumperdinked into cognition, and slightly fewer days had passed since I had vowed to avenge my Wheaties. I was still unable to make it more than a couple short footsteps before my noödermis locked onto some fascinating intricacy in the world around me and cogitated up a storm intense enough to stop me dead in my tracks. My shat-in Wheaties had gone unavenged… but at least I now knew that in 2,165,002 years, eleven months, six days, 16 hours, 23 minutes, and 44¼ seconds, the organic molecules comprising the ceiling tile above my toilet would become part of goosekind’s first expedition beyond the rim of the galaxy.
I also knew how many goats could dance on the head of a pin. (Zero.) And I suddenly realized that if I had had eye stalks instead of eye turrets and bulbs, I would be able to see my own reflection in my glossy, glossy teeth.
But all I had were a pair of eyebulbs set inside a pair of turrets (that is, four eyes in all). They could blink, they could spin, they could even tap out the theme song to Perfect Strangers if you really wanted them to—but they couldn’t look at my own teeth no matter how much I wished they could.
I wanted to pull my own eyes out in frustration.
I watched a few dozen molecules of diatomic oxygen go dancing by, 2.682 yards in front of me. They were doing the foxtrot. They looked so happy. And then, without hesitation, I inhaled them. Pulled down my trachea by an irresistible force, they were quickly surrounded by angry, grim blood cells, who went to work caging them in hemoglobin before they could put up even a feeble resistance. And then they were on their way to being incorporated into the trillions of tiny, tiny cells that make up yours truly—the Grand Pnårpissimo.
I wondered if these oxygen molecules had been responsible for the defecation that had taken place in my Wheaties. But then I squiddenly found myself surrounded by fifty-four vigintillion concentric and barefoot Alyssa Milanos, so I had to shift gears and perseverate on their sublime perfectitude for a while. Fifty-four vigintillion Alyssas, each with a centillion waggling feet, and each foot with a gorram-tillion long and slender toes. And each toe… contained not one, but two… perfect, black, universe-containing cubes.
Where was Jada Fire—or Loquisha—when you needed her?
Everything looped back on itself. Big existed within small, which existed within big again. Small was bigger than big. Big was smaller than small. And large… well. I needn’t say, honestly. Time ran in circles; even the Universe itself began to curve and curve and curve. Einstein, that cousin-schtupping little man, was right: The Universe curved. And no one could stop it. Even the man who could cut blocks of cheese open like an expert fisherman gutting a fish couldn’t prevent the Universe from ultimately curving and twisting back in upon itself, which it would do one day (through no fault of mine, I must add).
When the first of the self-absorbed, hairless, and smelly apes that dotted the surface of a small and insignificant planet set his (hairless, smelly) foot onto the grassy lands of a planet called M’n’rg’le’fneepfh IV, and when he subsequently made the most deadly mistake one could make there—forgetting to pay proper homage to the goosely queen of M’n’rg’le’fneepfh IV’s biggest nation-state—he would set in motion an unstoppable (and unstippable) chain of events that, 2,162,863 years thence, would lead to the destruction of mankind and the rise of the common farm goose as Earth’s apex predator and sentient overlord. The immortal queen would never forget that slight. She would set the wealth of her entire queendom to work preparing her vengeance. Soldiers would be trained and equipped, armies of armies would be amassed, fleets of fleets would be built, and—2,162,863 long years later—the Golden Goose Fleet would pound the surface of the Earth into molten slag, sparing nothing but their own domesticated and enslaved brethren that populated the planet in little clusters the monkeys had called “farms.” The planet would be rehabilitated into an endless grassy field for the geese to munch on (and shit in). The offensive little monkeys would be no more.
At long last, Queen Hr’nk’rrg’ngeee’hngki would have her revenge. Long after that one hairless, smelly ape had turned to dust, long after his entire stinky family line had gone extinct, and even long after his entire malodorous race had evolved into airborne creatures resembling nothing so much as lopsided, lumpy jellyfish with thirty-four eyes dotting their carapace and tentacles ending in noses—then, Hr’nk’rrg’ngeee’hngki would have her revenge.
Queen Hr’nk’rrg’ngeee’hngki would rule for ten-thousand-thousand years. Trillions of geese would honk out her name. Somewhere, God would be laughing.
Dogs would play poker. Spiders would wear panniers. And horses would wear high-heel shoes.
But enough about two million years from now. No one will believe me anyway—until it’s too late. Tomorrow will be more interesting to my readers, I think: The rocket ship that my minions, henchmen, and lackeys have been building for three weeks now would finally be complete, and I would finally be getting myself off of this small and insignificant planet once and for all—and just in the nick of time, too, considering how soon Queen Hr’nk’rrg’ngeee’hngki would sink her bill into this planet! My destination would be the Bagel Nebula, just a few degrees west of β Pictoris and a hell of a lot of light years closer. Nobody would shit in my Wheaties there. Nogeese would rise to power there. Of those things, I was sure. (But I was unsure about one thing: Where was Lucy Lawless when you needed her? Barefoot and naked and covered in syrup of squill again?)
Good bye and good riddance, you self-absorbed, hairless (and stinky!) monkeys! Enjoy your geesely overlords!! ◊